Obj. ID: 39293
Jewish printed books  Derech Hakodesh (Biblia Sacra), Hamburg, 1587

This text was prepared by William Gross:

This Bible was edited by Elias Hutter, a linguist, professor of Hebrew at Leipzig, and the editor of polyglot Bibles. While Hutter had a wide choice of printed texts available to him, his text does not agree exactly with any of his predecessors.
Huttter's primary concern was more didactic than textual. His Biblia Sacra was intended to enable students to read the Bible in the original, which he believed to be of great importance. In order to ease the linguistic difficulties, Hutter ingeniously employed two forms of type: the solid letter for the root or stem, and a hollow letter for prefixes and suffixes. When a root letter did not appear in any word, it was printed in a small type above it.
It seems, however, that Hutter's Bible was not a commercial success. Three versions of the title page have been identified, and the later "editions" of 1588 and 1603 appear to be issues of the 1587 stock, supplied with new title pages and preliminary material. The stock was also used for the Hamburg polyglot of 1596.
The title page is printed with text in decorative form. Within the book are decorative initial word panels.

Editor: Elias Hutter, 1553 - circa 1602